


the wave has two sides

by exogenesis



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Fluff, M/M, Panic Attacks, happy birthday akaashi, implied obsessive compulsive disorder, self deprecative thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-05
Updated: 2015-11-05
Packaged: 2018-05-05 03:14:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5359052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exogenesis/pseuds/exogenesis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The only thing that could possibly stop Keiji now was himself. Nothing else was, so why was he still here, feeling as empty as the apartment had been for the last few days?</p>
            </blockquote>





	the wave has two sides

**Author's Note:**

> Happy birthday, Akaashi Keiji, I love you so much. And thank you dear reader. Please see the tags before reading for your own safety!
> 
> The title comes from "And the Wave Has Two Sides," by On An On. A song that goes relatively well w/ this fic is "Drifting" from the aforementioned album :)

His thoughts rolled in slowly with an unsettling calm, not unlike a wave, as multicolored lights flickered reflections onto his glasses, which made the glare almost unbearable.

Keiji let his gaze fall on the people around him, and realized that the faces that passed by him at the crosswalk all seemed to be whispering one sickening thing into his ears. It oozed into his skull and seeped into his brain, repeating itself over and over and over again in a seemingly perpetual loop with no escape, with no signs that said “EXIT” in big red letters.

_“You’re pathetic.”_

As he crossed the streets of Shinjuku with people surrounding him on all sides and making him feel so small and insignificant, he knew that nobody there actually paid any of their attention to him, nor would they ever see him again. Keiji knew this, yet they caused him to look down as he nervously twiddled with the edge of his jacket sleeve. He tried not to let anyone see his face because he knew that if he happened to look up, anyone could see that no, he wasn’t okay, and yes, he desperately needed help with- whatever this was.

Anything more than the brushing of shoulders from someone passing him on the crosswalk would be just about enough to disturb how quietly, how delicately his heart was beating right now.

One nudge would remind him how he was one part worried and ninety-nine parts terrified.

 _“You’re falling apart,”_ they hissed into his ears, breathing air down his neck and shivers down his spine. He could feel the goosebumps slowly rise on his skin, the hair on the back of his neck standing up straight like soldiers looking into the eyes of an enemy.

The trek back to his flat dragged along with every painfully heavy step he took. He knew that even as so many blurred faces brushed shoulders with him on the sidewalk, making him aware that there were so many people here, not one of them would be waiting for him at the door of his apartment. Or take turns with him to wash the dishes that would pile up every few days, or pull the covers to their side of the bed even though they were supposed to be sharing Or shake the apartment with their loud voice that would end up being an eighth wonder of the world, sounding through the apartment with one of the most wonderfully beautiful sounds that Keiji had ever known.

He hasn't seen that person for three days.

But at the same time, the thought made him very aware of the fact that he hadn’t heard it for what felt like his entire life. He missed the sound, longed for his voice, and craved for his presence.

 _“You’re alone,”_ they seemed to whisper.

And boy, Keiji knew it well.

++

He wordlessly entered his apartment building without greeting the receptionist in his usually reserved but friendly-enough tone. He padded across the hallway where the elevator was, getting in promptly after some busy looking man with a coat and a briefcase appeared behind the opening doors like a hurricane and left Keiji’s sight as abruptly as he had appeared. Stepping into the small space, Keiji pressed the button for floor number four and pushed his glasses back up his nose. Wiping the sweat off his face with the back of his hand so his glasses wouldn't slide down again, he came to the realization that his head and his face were burning, yet his hands were still reflecting the weather outside with it’s bitter cold.

He breathed into them before rubbing them together, trying to warm up after being outside in the December air.

Keiji remembered that he left his apartment's air conditioning on before he left the house in an attempt to go for a jog. It was irresponsible of him to do that, and he knew it, but it was always too hot before, when there was always someone else to warm the apartment up.

Now it was a force of habit for Keiji to leave the air conditioning on. His hands were always cold now, no matter how much friction he created, even if the skin on his hands was starting to peel off and curl at the edges. It wasn’t as if he cared about them anymore anyways, not when nobody was there to hold them.

The elevator doors opened, and with that, Keiji felt the tears gather in his eyes, the pools of water getting heavier by the second. He wobbled to the door of the apartment, looking up at the peeling, golden numbers adorning the wood that read apartment 4-5.

He felt water threatening to streak down his cheeks despite his inward mantra of, _Keiji, what are you doing, we’ve been over this, what are you doing, stop, control yourself-_

Because he knew that once he started, he wouldn’t, couldn't stop.

He searched for his keys in his coat pockets hurriedly, moving his hand around before he caught something and traced his right index finger on a sharp edge. Keiji tugged at the keychain that clung onto one of the loose strings at the bottom of his pocket. He yanked it free before taking the rest of his keyring out of his pocket, and fumbling with it until he found the right key to shove into the door's handle.

 _Hurry up, door._ Keiji felt the tears collect in his eyelashes.

The door mercifully opened after a last push. A rush of chilly air was the only thing inside of the flat to welcome him, and it embraced him with the only hug that he had gotten in the last three days. He turned around and closed the door behind him.

Not being able to bring himself to face the apartment, Keiji pressed his forehead to the door and looked down at his shoes, arms hanging uselessly at his sides. He neglected turning the lights on.

Earlier that evening, he simply wanted to go out for a run around the nearby park a few times before heading back home, but he found that he grew winded sooner than he had expected. Every time Keiji had attempted to break off into a jog, it felt like his legs gained ten more pounds with every step he took. As the air around him grew colder, he realized that he was in fact, shivering, and that he was in fact, sweating at the same time. Sweating so much that his glasses were slipping down the bridge of his nose again, ready to fall off.

He had returned to the flat when his hands were numb and he was starting to be able to see his breath as white wisps in the air that would gently float away from him. He walked alone, to the flat, alone, with his hands in his pockets instead of being intertwined with someone else's.

Even as he stood in the apartment where he had once barely ever been the only person taking up space, Keiji found that the heavy silence was louder than anything that had resounded through the walls before. His heart jumped up to his ears and banged on his eardrums, getting louder, and surrounding him, and closing in, and-

Deep breaths, Keiji, he thought. His felt his chest rise up and down, declining in speed, slowly, steadily. His shoulders relaxed. Little by little, Keiji turned his body around until he was facing his apartment.

He flipped his lights on. Then off. On again. Off again. On. _For good luck,_ he told himself.

The sudden slap of reality hit him in the face, not as hard as it had yesterday but still enough to sting. The apartment was so, so much larger than it was before with nobody else to bump into but his own thoughts. As Keiji stood at the entrance, he gloomily glanced over to the kitchen with the sink full of unwashed dishes. He remembered that it’d been Koutarou’s turn to wash them but no laughing Koutarou had come back to finish the job, only a lingering, phantom memory of what should’ve been there leaving an unpleasant aftertaste in Keiji’s mouth.

Keiji scolded himself. _He isn't dead or anything, so why are you losing your mind over this?_

He frustratedly kicked his shoes off with the backs of his heels and threw his keys with the horned-owl keychain onto his coffee table. It wasn’t theirs for the time being. Keiji was getting better at remembering these things.

He dragged his increasingly heavy feet into his bedroom where he shed his clothing and left himself in boxers and a t-shirt before he went back into the living room and cranked up the air conditioning. He could only feel a faint sensation that lingered in his fingers as he turned the knob on the AC up. His hands were still numb and clammy from the cold.

Koutarou had told him that his perpetually freezing hands meant that people haven't held them enough in his life.

WebMD articles and strangers from various chat forums that he had read at 2 am told him that it was a sign of some illness. He remembered that the so-called illness had a name that was too long to remember or too hard to pronounce, especially at such a late hour when his mind had formed a thick layer of fog that made every word with over five letters in it incomprehensible.

Keiji liked to think that it was the former that was true. No matter how illogical it was, or how little sense it made, Keiji knew that it was the hands that grasped his that made them warm. If it wasn't Koutarou's beautifully articulated hands, then maybe it was the mere presence of the loud man next to him that sent warmth seeping into his skin and tricking into his veins.

Or perhaps it was the whistling that lit up the mornings as Koutarou poured milk into two bowls of the fine china that Keiji’s mom had given them as a housewarming gift. Or maybe it was the warm, embracing silence of the two of them sitting on the couch and feeling posh because it was 7am and they were eating cereal from fine china. Or maybe it was Koutarou’s explanation about just why exactly he decided to use the china, saying something along the lines of “Ah, yeah! About the dishes, I was working overtime last night and this is pretty much the only clean stuff we had left.” Of course, Keiji knew that. They were both working overtime the night before.

He’d say it with a cheerful voice still laced with a trace of sleepiness, followed with one of his quieter chuckles. Keiji would laugh along too, even though he knew he was supposed to be at upset at his boyfriend for neglecting the dishes.

Maybe it was the promise from Koutarou, saying that he would come back from work in time to watch the first episode of a show that finally got a season two. Maybe that kept Keiji warm in the December weather.

That’s why it probably made sense three days ago, when all the blood in his veins felt like they completely froze and stuck in place when his phone rang and an unnervingly amiable voice came from the other end of the phone.

It told him that Bokuto Koutarou was admitted into Okubo hospital at 7:56 pm because some person found him collapsed in the restroom and called for an ambulance. The receptionist called Keiji because he was in Koutarou’s phone as an emergency contact.

They continued to prattle off about things that he couldn’t even begin to understand and started assaulting Keiji with questions about “Bokuto-san's” condition over the last few days and telling him that he couldn’t get any more information unless he showed up in person. They said though, that it was probably best for him to wait at home, as “Bokuto-san” had a likely chance of being discharged before midnight. More information. More rambling.

But Keiji was nothing if not patient.

More time passed.

(He was losing his patience.)

Before Keiji could utter a single word of response to the disembodied voice, his phone had slipped out of his hand and fell to the floor, causing the SIM card and its cover to pop out and slide across the ground. It was then when he noticed something peculiar was going on, so he confusingly brought both of his hands in front of his face, and realized that they were violently shaking.

His legs felt like they had shattered like the frail china bowls that he had eaten from that morning, and the next thing Keiji knew, he was on the ground, still able to feel the tremors that wouldn’t let him think clearly, let alone look for a stupid SIM card.

He could feel that his hands were shaking, and soon they were shaking him, his bones, his mind, his thoughts, shaking so violently that it felt like it was trying to dislodge the information from his memory entirely. A stream of tears built up and hung at the tips of his eyelashes. Afraid that they would fall and start fogging up his glasses, he kept his eyes shut as he frantically ran his hands across the floor to look for his SIM card, going in blind for the storm to come.

All the yelling and cars and horns outside that could be heard through the window echoed fifteen times louder, and his ears were ringing with high pitched bells and blank noise at the same time, and everything was spinning, spinning so goddamned much, and Keiji was getting so dizzy and his thoughts were spammed just like his email inbox filled up with nothing but messages that read, _I’m going insane aren’t I?_

The walls were suffocating him, leaving him gasping and begging for a person who wasn’t even there, begging for his arms to wrap around him in a warm embrace like they had done before, with a soothing voice in his ear telling him that everything is okay, that he’s going to be fine, that someone’s there right in front of him with open arms.

Dry sobs echoed through the apartment. Keiji felt the sound pass through the paper thin walls of his flat for all to hear, for all to be disturbed by. But Keiji couldn’t shut himself up, couldn’t keep quiet, couldn’t keep himself from burdening anyone else yet again. He tried to be quiet, but that only led to his body shuddering, shaking with repressed cries of anguish, choking on his own tears that he wouldn't let out.

His head felt like it was being pulled apart by the seams in every direction, not being able to process any information because of the pins and needles that his mind had fallen victim to. When did he let himself become so dependent on someone else? When did he get so attached?

When did he end up finding love within these walls?  

The furniture and the walls and the carpet and the tables and the chairs were all distorted and collapsing unto themselves, and everything started blurring together into one blob, and those were his own damned tears, and when did he start start crying, why was everything so bright, why can’t I find this stupid SIM card, and why isn’t Koutarou back and _Koutarou-_

_What happened? Why didn’t you say anything, were you mad at me, is that why you didn’t tell me anything? For how long, what did I do wrong? I bet you couldn’t even look at me, I’m sorry,_

“I'm so, so sorry.”

The empty air didn’t accept his apology.

++

Keiji finally plugged the spout of emotions that was flooding his head and found it within himself to stop the quivering that seemed to shake everything around him.

After some time, he finally found the small card that he had been looking for. He popped it back into the back of his phone with minimally shaky hands and called back the last number that was in his phone history.

It rang. It rang some more. A click.

An artificially bubbly voice answered the call. “This is the Okubo Hospital receptionist desk, how may I help you?”

Keiji just needed to know that Koutarou was doing okay. So he put up with the questioning of himself from the receptionist to make sure he was authorized to hear about “Bokuto-san’s current medical condition,” as well as questions about Koutarou’s relationship to Keiji. The receptionist had finally told him that Koutarou was doing well enough to talk to the nurses, but he’d need to show up in person so they could fully verify that he was allowed to know more.

That’s all Keiji needed to know. Even with the satisfactory information that should have let him flatten the lump of stress that was sitting at the bottom of his throat, he lay alone in the bed, already accepting the fact that sleep was a luxury that just wouldn’t be granted to him that night.

++

He wasn’t quite sure if it was guilt, or resentment, or regret, or some strange mixture of the three that stuck in between his teeth and constantly reminded him that they were there, but what he did know was that for the past three days since that phone call, he’d gotten about four and a half blinks of sleep, even when he wouldn't get out of bed until at least noon.

 _Which_ , he noted. _Should be about five hours later than when I used to wake up._

Satisfied that he could still count on himself to keep track of the time, he finally made the decision to at the very least, put on his glasses after putting his hand out in front of him and concluding that all he could see were five blobs that were supposed to be his fingers.

Keiji lay in what was his bed, and reached over to his nightstand to look for his glasses by maneuvering his hand across the wooden surface until he felt something.

Coming up short, he retreated his hand and went to rub his eyes only to instead press a pair of metal frames into his face. Confused at why his vision was fuzzy, he took them off and wiped the lenses with his shirt. There were dry tear stains smudged on the lenses.

 _Ah,_ he bitterly recalled. _I feel asleep with my glasses on, didn't I?_

 _Sleep is sleep,_ he supposed. No matter how little of it he ended up getting each night.

He lifted his legs over the side of the bed and let his feet touch the ground for a second before he retracted them. It was cold.

He tried again, this time standing up before almost simultaneously getting back under his covers again. Step by step, the process was repeated until he was able to bring himself to open the door to the living room.

He flipped the light switch on. Off again. On. Off again. On. Off. _For good luck,_ he always told himself.

Keiji shuffled across the hardwood floors of the flat, barely taking either of his bare feet off the ground. He ended up in his kitchen, his legs realizing before he did that he was hungry, and that he needed breakfast in the middle of the day.

He scoured the cupboards, searching every shelf until he found a single plastic container that hadn’t been used in months, but was clean enough to put milk and cereal in. He avoided gazing at the leaning tower of plates. It could topple at any moment, shattering the plates into hundreds of pieces that Keiji couldn’t or wouldn’t get repaired.

He ate his cereal in silence, not unlike the last few days in which he had the flat entirely to himself. Keiji tried to tell himself that he had been wishing for some silence ever since he started renting this place out, ever since he started sharing the same living space with the loud boy that he had met in high school.

But now, the only thing that could be heard in the apartment were the occasional scraping sounds of his spoon on the bottom of the plastic container, and the steady buzzing of the AC that probably hadn’t been replaced for the last five years.

He continued scraping the bottom of his cereal.

++

He found himself looking at the only mirror that existed in the entire flat, inside the only bathroom that existed in the entire flat. He gazed into his own eyes, slowly waving to himself in the mirror because there was no way that this person that he was seeing right now was him. This person had five bony fingers on each hand and skin that shared the same color as the ghostly wisps that was his breath that he had let out while jogging yesterday.

He remembered back to one night where he was laying on the couch and watching some show on TV with Koutarou, who had been absentmindedly combing his fingers through his mousy black hair as he lay his head on Koutarou’s lap. He had told him with a sleepy, lopsided grin that creased the laugh lines on his face and lit up the room as brightly as the TV, that Keiji’s hair reminded him of feathers. Soft, smooth, feathers.

But now, as he looked at himself in the mirror, he realised that his feathery hair was clumped together, sticking up in places that reminded him of Kuroo’s ever-present bedhead that he had tried getting rid of multiple times before deciding to abandon the effort.

Shadows were forming under Keiji’s eyes as he went on with less and less sleep as the time went by. The hours that he’s been staying awake showed themselves in the form of shadows, creating eclipses on his face against his pale skin.

His face showed no evidence of any laugh lines.

Keiji’s phone vibrated on the sink, showing notifications for six missed calls and an absurd amount of text messages from people ranging from Kuroo to his own mother. None were from Koutarou.

He quickly scanned the messages and missed calls, not bothering to stop and read the letters that flickered across his screen. His finger stopped when he saw that three out of the six missed calls were from none other than Kuroo. Knowing that he wasn’t in any type of situation that made him want to call or talk to anyone, Keiji instead pulled up his messages and scrolled, this time slowly, through everything that he had received from him.

**November 31st, Received 7:18 PM**

**Kuroo: DID YOU HEAR WHAT HAPPENED???**

**Kuroo: WAIT OF COURSE YOU HAVE**

**Kuroo: HAVE YOU BEEN TO THE HOSPITAL ALREADY I DONT SEE YOU**

**Kuroo: I'm in the waiting room right now, they won't tell me anything bc I’m not related and bokutos in the ER but what did they tell you when you were there?**

**Kuroo: akaashi?**

**December 1st, Received 4:18 PM**

**Kuroo: Hey so I checked up on Bokuto this morning and they finally let me in after he gave perms**

**Kuroo: He's well enough to talk and stuff, but he's still not allowed to go home for whatever reason. They're running tests and all that jazz**

**Kuroo: Don’t tell me you lost your phone or something do I have to physically come to your place so I can help you find it**

**Kuroo: Also so I can talk to you but whatever**

He scrolled through the tirade of messages that were left for him when he didn’t go near his phone. Kuroo left this many messages and he didn’t even reply? There was no explanation that Keiji could think up that would somehow justify his not replying. Despite this, he kept reading.

**December 1st, Received 7:27 PM**

**Kuroo: okay I just realized that you never lose anything so**

**Kuroo: Akaashi??**

**Kuroo: hello??? are you okay??**

Keiji rubbed his eyes with his left hand and yawned before scanning the wall of text that was Kuroo’s messages until he got to today’s.

His hands were trembling.

He noticed that the politeness and the carefulness of the messages slowly declined each time another attempt was made to contact him.

The last text was sent an hour ago.

**December 3rd, Received 1:54 PM**

**Kuroo: shit akaashi, i hate to break it to you but you need to go check on bokuto**

**Kuroo: i don't know what happened between you two but he's in the hospital and he needs you**

**Kuroo: you havent visited once, have you?**

**Kuroo: where are you?**

Keiji couldn’t think of a good enough answer.

**Kuroo: you need forget whatever petty shit you have going on honestly**

**Kuroo: i don't even care anymore**

**Kuroo: you’re being selfish**

**Kuroo: bokuto could be dying for all we know**

Keiji stopped reading and almost slammed his phone back down onto the sink’s counter. The feeling of a convulsing stomach made itself clear to him, like there was something stuck to his chest that clogged up his lungs. His eyes widened as he pressed both of his hands onto the sink for balance.

Bokuto Koutarou wasn’t dying. He’d come home soon, and when he was up and feeling well Keiji would tell him how sorry he was, how he was so undeserving of Koutarou, and Koutarou would forgive him, Koutarou would be okay with it, Koutarou would be okay, and then Keiji would be okay, and then they'd wash the mountain of dishes in the kitchen sink before sitting on the couch together like they normally do and watch the recording of the show that they had missed and everything would be okay.

Keiji wasn’t hyperventilating.

No, he wasn’t.

++

Any shred of solidity that Keiji thought he had painstakingly built up in his life slipped through his fingers floated away into the December air within a matter of minutes.

Keiji was leading himself to believe that the apartment was probably colder than the air outside by now. White wisps of his own breath were forming as he lay down on the bed, head filled with blank noise and a sensation of pins and needles taking over his arms and legs.

It was completely dark in the bedroom, with Keiji not bothering to turn on the lamp when his head felt so light that any movement could tilt the furniture around him and make him feel dizzy while making everything so bright and blinding that he felt like he was going to collapse.

So instead, he chose to keep the lights off.

He had been lying in a loud silence for what could have easily been an extremely long five minutes or an incredibly short five hours.

These daylight hours had no other significance to Keiji other than the amount of time that had passed where instead of sleeping, he was tripping over his own thoughts.

He wasn’t needed where Koutarou was. It was simple as that.

Keiji knew that he shouldn’t be in places where it wasn’t his problem.

He had learned it the hard way.

Keiji had been sharing the flat with Koutarou for what must have been a few months, being completely codependent on the charismatic man who would always turn up in one way or another. Keiji would always end up somehow learning something new about him everyday, always some new surprise.

Keiji knew that Koutarou couldn’t ever deal with the cockroaches that would sometimes end up in the sink, which would leave him to take care of getting rid of them.

Keiji knew that Koutarou’s favorite restaurant was the little American-styled diner fifteen minutes away. But it was only his favorite when it was 2am and he was eating pancakes and eggs.

(He remembered that Koutarou always liked them sunny-side up.)

It’s been a few months since they’re really treated themselves to a nice dinner, if pancakes before the sun came up even qualified as a dinner.

The flat that they shared wasn’t exactly the nicest of places, but the rent wasn’t something that only one of them could pay. So as the both of them started working, taking on extra hours and the occasional extra shift for some co-worker who couldn’t come in that day, money slowly became more abundant if not plentiful, taking the place of the free-time that they originally had so much of before.

They worked the same hours, so the apartment either had both or neither of them, but by the time the front door was swung open from an exhausting day at work, it was already 11 PM and time to flop into the bed face down, falling asleep as soon as their heads hit the pillows.

Keiji knew that both of them were getting worn out from waking up early every day and working until the evening, but they had thought that between the two of them, they could handle it.

But instead of basking in the warmth of each other's company, the evening was filled with quiet snores instead of pleasant murmuring and faint voices coming from the TV.

And even when it was either of their turns to wash the dishes, the job was never 100% done. The house was getting messy. They were getting sloppy with their chores. They acted like the ever growing pile of dishes didn't exist and pretended like they didn't see it out of the corner of their eye.

And as the days went on, with the uncleanliness becoming more blatantly obvious each time either of them paid attention, there was less conversation. Too much work. Too little time. Not enough sleep.

The air was always still in the flat, never moving.

Keiji really missed Koutarou. He really, really did.

It wasn’t something like love that kept the two of them together, and Keiji knew it. He would have left a long time ago if it was only love. Love wasn’t new to either of them, they’ve both felt it before with other people, yet where are those other people now? Where’s that feeling that they’ve felt before? What could have possibly happened to make looking at that person’s face not feel the same as it had felt in the past?

If it was just the feeling of mutual affection that kept people together, then it would break apart in a matter of time.

In the end, Keiji came to figure out on his own one day after another person had come and gone like a hurricane, leaving as abruptly as they had appeared. _It really is more of a choice than an emotion._

And Keiji had chosen Koutarou. But he had a strange way of showing it. The fact that he was still here proved it.

++

Two things that Keiji was sure of at this very moment:

He had dozed off.

And time had passed.

He was still in the pitch black bedroom, feeling so numb that he couldn’t feel himself moving any of his limbs, let alone register that he was standing up. Everything felt the same, and there was no way that he could tell the difference between being sprawled on his bed staring up at a blank ceiling and standing up on the hardwood floors staring blankly ahead at what was probably a wall.

Keiji stuck his hand out in front of him, but his eyes didn’t recognize any changes in what he was seeing.

He’s never felt worthless before. Like he was scraping at the bottom of his stupid plastic container that he was eating cereal out of because he couldn’t even bring himself to wash a pile of dishes.

He saw a light out of the corner of his eye and saw his phone screen flash with the notification of what was probably another text message from-

He walked over to his nightstand and checked.

**Kuroo:**

**So you’ve finally seen the the messages?**

**I can’t force you to do anything but hear me out.**

**Okay, you’re here.**

(Keiji silently berated himself for checking. Kuroo had seen that he had read everything.)

**Kuroo: Bokuto’s scaring us all right now. We’re all freaking out. None of us know what to say anymore. He’s being so strange and he’s acting really weird and he’s all dejected but he’s loud and fucking annoying at the same time and**

**Kuroo: He hasn’t mentioned you once, Akaashi. Everytime I bring you up he changes the subject.**

**Kuroo: I don’t know what’s wrong with him, but the nurses said that he not giving them permission to tell us whats wrong but all of us pretty much started expecting the worse after hearing that**

**Kuroo: hes coughing and sputtering and sneezing so much and he looks like fucking shit**

**Kuroo: and i cant do anything but sit at the side of his hospital bed and try to take his mind off things but**

**Kuroo: knowing that its not really me he wants to see i dont know if i can do this anymore**

**Kuroo: you need to be here with us**

**Kuroo: you need to be here**

Keiji’s eyes started watering.

**Kuroo: please be here**

He didn’t know what made him do it, if it was Kuroo’s words or a final revelation or something else that caused him to get changed into different clothes at record speed, but he was doing it. That’s all that really mattered now, when he knew that he wouldn’t be intruding, when he knew he was wanted, when he knew that Koutarou wasn’t even mad.

Or maybe he was. Keiji didn’t know why that possibility deterred him before. He hurried out of his bedroom, slamming the door behind him and practically running around the flat to retrieve his keys and his wallet.

After slapping his pockets to make sure he had everything, he whirled to face the door before pausing.

He was going outside. He was going to run. As fast as he could.

He knew that Koutarou wouldn’t be the one opening that door and light up the apartment. Keiji knew that he was needed somewhere else.

For the first time in what felt like an eon, Keiji stupidly grinned.

He had places to go.

++

Saying that Kuroo was glad to see Keiji was an overstatement if it was anything at all. He looked like he had seen a ghost.

Considering what Keiji had seen of himself the other day, maybe Kuroo was seeing a ghost. A mixed expression of relief and resentment was etched into his face, eyebrows crinkled and eyes tired, bags under his eyes.

Unlike Keiji, Kuroo had been the one coming to the hospital everyday staying late until the nurses made him leave and talking with Koutarou to distract him.

(Though, to be fair, Kuroo was the one that did most of the talking.)

Unlike Keiji, Kuroo was here.

“Happy birthday, I guess.” His eyes shifted to the side, the uncomfortableness palpable in the air.

 _Right._ Keiji remembered glancing at his phone and seeing the date for a brief second. _It’s my birthday, isn’t it?_

Add that to the list of things that he had disregarded this past week.

Keiji tried hard to speak, forcing out the first words that he had uttered in days. “Thanks, Kuroo.”

He saw a grin creep up on the taller man’s face, his eyes visibly lighting up even under that ridiculous bedhead that he had been sporting for longer than Keiji had known him.

No questions were asked, no more words were exchanged, but as Keiji continued past him in the hallway he knew that things weren’t over between the two of them yet.

Keiji got the feeling that it didn’t really matter right now anyways.

He turned in the winding hallways, following the directions that the receptionist had given him when he had rushed in and demanded the location of Bokuto Koutarou. He chanted them like a mantra in his head, over and over again.

 _Left._ He made a left. _Right._ A right. _Use the elevator up. Another Left. Third door down. Room 405._

Room 405. Keiji stopped right when the plaque on the door was at his eye level, boring into his mind and casting a shadow over it that he didn’t want to look back it. He pushed on it and stepped into the room.

The first thing that he noticed was that it was bright- an enormous contrast to the bedroom back at home.

A lump in the middle of the hospital bed was the next thing he noticed. IV bags snaking behind other cords and equipment into what was Koutarou’s arm. White tips of hair came into view before the man completely sat himself up in his bed. Wide, golden eyes overtook Keiji’s gaze. The warm air lay still, sitting on Keiji’s shoulders. The weight of his mistakes crawled on his back.

A loud cough came from the figure in the hospital gown. They managed to sputter out a name. “Keiji?”

And he felt it. One by one, tears ran down his eyelashes and plopped onto Keiji’s glasses before dripping down to his face. His breathing was heavy. His vision was foggy. But he didn’t care. He had a place to be.

Sobbing, Keiji was in the hospital bed with Koutarou within seconds, crying, and crying, tears that were his and tears that weren’t running down both of their faces, and Koutarou’s IVs were getting pulled on but they didn’t care, Keiji was here, Koutarou was here, they were there, crying and sobbing and wailing so loudly that the entire hospital could probably hear them through the paper thin walls but they didn’t care.

Keiji felt warm, the room felt warm, and Koutarou’s hands felt warm. The blood in Keiji’s veins unfroze and he was feeling so truly happy, wrapping his arms around Koutarou and pressing his face and glasses into his shoulder and letting out muffled apologies into a hospital gown. A much needed embrace hugged back tightly, threatening to let go. But Keiji didn’t care.

“Koutarou, Koutarou, I’m so sorry, I missed you I’m sorry I love you,” Keiji let out with one breath. He was smiling through his tears, feeling so incredibly stupid that he moped around for three whole days wading in his own misery instead of being where he was needed.

“I love you so much please Koutarou you’re okay right you’re not dead right?” Keiji was choking back more tears that threatened to surface, taking rushed breaths in between sobs. “You’re not dying, who cares you’re here, you’re okay, you’re-”

“Keiji please, just…” Koutarou coughed in between his words. “I never thought I’d say this to you but… please be quiet.”

And silence filled the room, but then it was interrupted with the sudden boom of laughter that came from both of them, smiling and grinning like children.

“Where were you?” Koutarou asked. It was bound to be brought up some time, and Keiji knew it. But Keiji had an answer this time.

“Not here.”

Koutarou gave him a confused look, as if to say _“Well, that’s kind of obvious,”_ but Keiji somewhat expected that. He was confused by his own reasoning, too.

Koutarou had another coughing fit before pulling Keiji back so he could see his eyes. He blinked before saying something with a wide grin.

“Well,” he paused. “Happy Birthday, Keiji.” Koutarou untangled Keiji’s arms from his torso and grasped the pale hands into his own.

Keiji’s thoughts rolled in with a relieving calm, not unlike a wave.

_My hands are warm now._

 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!
> 
> tumblr; akaashily


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